


Angel Eyes

by PlotDotOh (TheCheerfulPornographer), radial_symmetry



Series: All Sorts of Omens [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drabble, Evolution, Gen, Prehistoric, blatant and unscientific mixing of evolution and creationism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/PlotDotOh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/radial_symmetry/pseuds/radial_symmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The eyes are the one part of a being that can't truly be disguised — being the windows to the soul, and all of that.  The blue is always present.  It can only be covered up with an illusion. </p><p>A horribly uncomfortable and tiresome illusion.  </p><p>His eye-glamour makes Aziraphale's eyes itch and water like he's suffering from the worst hay fever.  But for a long time, Aziraphale chalks it up to the price of living incognito, and doesn't really give any thought to possible alternatives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angel Eyes

All humans have brown eyes.

This is the way that it's been ever since Creation. Humans have two legs, two arms, hair on their heads, fantastically inventive brains, brownish skin, dark hair, and brown eyes.

The eyes are one of the primary ways God's Creations are distinguished. Angels have blue or violet eyes, humans have brown eyes, and demons' eyes are yellow or green. It's never been a problem.

But it's becoming a problem for Aziraphale, now.

The eyes are the one part of a being that can't truly be disguised — being the windows to the soul, and all of that. The blue is always present. It can only be covered up with an illusion. 

A horribly uncomfortable and tiresome illusion. 

His eye-glamour makes Aziraphale's eyes itch and water like he's suffering from the worst hay fever.

For long centuries, the eye-glamour has been the worst part about being stationed on Earth; worse, even, than dealing with that pesky demon. He allows himself the luxury of lifting the illusion only at night, when the humans are sleeping and he's alone. Sometimes those moments of respite are the only thing that keeps him going.

(His constant irritation might make him sharper with the demon than he really ought to be. You'd be nasty too, if your eyes were constantly itching and you couldn't even acknowledge it most of the time.)

For a long time, Aziraphale chalks it up to the price of living incognito, and doesn't really give any thought to possible alternatives.

\---

The breakthrough occurs one day when Aziraphale is making his way to a new tribe.

He moves around once every human lifetime or so, to avoid suspicion, and gain exposure to different tribes. As time goes on, the human race has expanded, pressing outward into new areas of land, venturing further to the west and north with every generation. The current tribe that he's seeking out has pressed into more distant reaches than any _homo sapiens_ before them; only the Neanderthals have ever made their homes where these people now live.

When he arrives at the village, on the shores of a large body of water that will someday be called the Black Sea, Aziraphale carries an offering of fruits and berries. (Meat is traditional, but he still can't quite bring himself to kill God's innocent creatures.) He presents it to the villagers, a sign of peaceful intent. 

When the tribespeople gather to share dinner, Aziraphale is shocked to see that several of the children have hair that's a vibrant shade of red, almost as bright as some of the fruits that he carries.

The angel has never seen the like. In his experience, human hair varies quite a bit, from black to lightest brown, from tightly-curled to wavy. But never this crazy red. 

At first he's concerned that it might be a sign of infernal interference; perhaps a wile of that demon's, somehow. He takes the first chance he gets, when one of the red-headed children is sleeping, to peer closely into his body and try to figure out what's going on.

He's relieved to find that there are no traces of demonic interference. What there is, however, is a change in the shape of a certain gene, causing a shift in the ratios of dark to bright pigments in the hair follicles. Ergo, red hair. 

How very fascinating! Aziraphale hadn't thought that God would allow such mutations to occur, but apparently He's taking a looser hand with this Creation than He has with His other children.

The next morning, when Aziraphale goes to put his eye-illusion on, he suddenly gets the seed of an idea. Could there be a way to make his life more bearable, to remove the need for the awful eye-glamour? There just might be!

In the end, his plan takes only a few decades to carry out. 

One of the village women is newly pregnant, and she readily acquiesces when Aziraphale asks to bless the child. With his hands on her swollen belly, it's but the work of a moment to find the proper gene. Once the target chromosome is located, he fishes around in the surrounding segments until he finds one that will serve his needs. After that, all it takes is a little rummaging and a flick of energy to freeze the sequence in place, and it is done.

When the baby is born, the villagers draw back and exclaim at her light blue eyes. It's a shade that the humans have never seen before, and Aziraphale has been around people for long enough to know that this difference will make her seem highly intriguing to the men of the tribe. 

He hangs around long enough to bless her own children, and see to it that her family thrives. Then he only has to wait for a couple of generations, to give the mutation time to spread widely.

The day that he walk into a human village without wearing his eye-glamour for the first time, is the best day of Aziraphale's existence so far. 

\---

Eventually Crowley gets so sick of Aziraphale's bragging that he invents sunglasses, just to shut the angel up.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea was inspired by [this article](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22934464/ns/health-health_care/t/genetic-mutation-makes-those-brown-eyes-blue/#.T5ObBSRAY00) about how all blue-eyed people have a single mutant ancestor.
> 
>  
> 
> When thinking about this story, I realized that if you really wanted to be a massive douchebag, you could maybe interpret it in a racist sort of way. Please refrain. I'm not saying that blue eyes are "better", or any sort of nonsense like that.


End file.
